Tactile cues and feedback enhance the human-machine interface. Providing tactile feedback increases the amount of information available to a user in the operation of a device. Some devices utilize structural tactile methods. One such example is to provide a raised surface on an input surface, e.g., keypad, of the device. Such methods, however, are inherently static, and thus, cannot offer a wide array of, or effective, tactile feedback. Whereas before, one had to rely solely on aural, visual cues, and/or structural tactile cues, active methods of tactile feedback, i.e., haptics, increasingly provide greater and more effective physical cues to users of various devices.
Enhancing the functionality of a device with haptics, however, generally requires additional processor memory and speed. Moreover, enhancing a device with haptics may further complicate design considerations by placing demands on space constraints, especially where manufacturers of such devices, to satisfy consumer demands, strive to reduce the physical size of devices while increasing device functionality.
In a one-dimensional environment, one may select an item from a set of items, e.g., a list of names, by using a “detent” effect, where each item in the item set can be rendered or mapped to a single detent in a one-dimensional device. In a two-dimensional environment, one may select an item in horizontal or vertical directions. Therefore, one may speak of two-dimensional detents, also referred to as matrix-detents.
To create a haptic effect with a single effect located at different locations on a workspace, or interface area (such as for example, a keypad), it is known to create all those haptic effects in the device, and play them each cycle. A shortcoming of this known approach is that to create a two-dimensional detent, more than one effect has to be created. This, in turn, demands more on the communications bandwidth, as well as more memory and computational time on an embedded system, i.e., a system disposed on or within a device or system. Some applications are not well-suited for communicating an amount of traffic demanded by the known approach.